When a stranger returns your purse

Angel

This morning I drove north to a coffee shop in Houghton–5th and Elm (may it forever be immortalized in song and dance, as you will soon discover why) and ordered a coffee and cranberry biscotti.

Then set my big clunky red purse, covered with tiny mirrors, a gift from an Indian physical therapist earlier this year (see this story if you’ve forgotten) on the floor.  An inner voice warned me, “Now don’t you DARE forget that purse!”

I then unpacked Ms. Ellie, the laptop computer from the backpack, retrieved the mouse and waited for the Internet signal before typing a lengthy almost 900 word blog (which you may or may not eventually read) while delightedly sipping coffee and inadvertently tossing biscotti crumbs to and fro.

I even forgot who I was for maybe a half hour.  That’s how engrossed and delighted I was in the writing.

Made of dreams and dandelion fuzz

Make a wish and come to earth for a lifetime.

So many lives are made of dreams, of wishes, of wants, of blow-the-dandelion-fuzz across the back yard so the Forest Owls hoot your deepest desires back to you just before midnight.

I once dreamed of traveling to Switzerland, to Italy, how about France? Perhaps even Mexico, Nicaragua, maybe Ecuador.  I dreamed of writing a famous book, you know, the kind of book which leaves readers gasping, wanting more, truly inspired, truly knowing themselves in some deeper way.

Hullabaloo

During the snowstorm

Such a hullabaloo in the Northern forest!

Spring Seed Boy fell in love with young Snow Maiden.

Oh, it’s forbidden, don’t you know!

Icy beauty

The Winter Queen, in her fury, locked Spring Seed Boy in a shed behind the six-foot snow bank.

Spring Seed Boy cries and it rains.  Young Snow Maiden weeps and it snows.  The Winter Queen gripes and it snows some more.

The oregano silently stews.

The Sun King tried, yes he tried, to negotiate a truce.  He shined his hardest, but to no avail.

The Mourning Doves in the bird feeder mourn.  The poor robins, just in from the sunny south, look in vain for worms beneath the endless white snow.  The bear refuse to leave hibernation.  The trees refuse to leaf.  The ice on the lake refuses to melt.

Advice to a young blogger

Grandma Blogger in cool hat

Dear Blogging Tyke, come and sit on Grandma’s knees and I will tell you the Blogging Secrets of Life.

(What? you gasp.  I’m no tyke! And you’re no grandma!  And your knees certainly don’t look sturdy enough to sit upon!)

Yes, child, you are a blogging tyke.  You are a wee one in the world of on-line blogging depending on how the experts determine your age.  There is a complicated formula utilized by the Powers that Be which figures your blogging age.  I’m not 100% certain, but mathematically it goes something like this:  number of posts published multiplied by commenters multiplied by hits divided by years plus 6% if the search engines love ya.

Have you figured out your blogging age yet?  OK, get on my knee and we’ll get started.  (You get off my knee.  You’re too heavy.  We’re taking that elderly gentleman first.)

Odd

Hushabye… 2009 photo

This is so odd.

No words have been rising recently.

Have you experienced silent times when nothing–no matter how hard you try–wants to come forth?

When the Universe issues a Silence Decree?

When all the stories dry up and don’t seem worth sharing?

I’ve written two blog posts in the last week, but couldn’t publish them.  They weren’t “bad” posts.  The heart just didn’t agree they should be published.

(I am sneaking this one in before the heart disagrees.  LOL!  You know–if the heart disagrees I’m outa here.)

The holiness of Santa, Merlot and angel pink spoonbill wings

Holy river of ice from sky

I don’t know a lot.

Years ago–exactly at age eleven, sprawled out on the scratchy orange and black upholstered chair in our family room–I remember thinking very assuredly, “I know everything there is to know.”

That little preteen really thought she knew everything.  This 55-year-old mama, however, sitting on this velvet green upholstered computer chair, is more and more convinced that she knows very little.

She is convinced she knows one thing.  Well, she’s fairly convinced she knows one thing.  She’s almost certain that it’s true from what she’s glimpsed in deep meditation and when yellow and blue symphony skies  steal breath from the heart.

All of life is holy, my friend.  All of life is holy.  All of life is whole.

Our annual Christmas fight

Every Christmas season it’s the same.  The hard-scrabbling fight for presents, the intense gleam in greedy eyes as we steal the gaily wrapped packages, the glint of green and red holiday lights on the dice as they clatter against metal.

Lights dim low in Nancy’s living room as we eight women sit cross-legged on the floor, like children, except for one of us who leans low from her chair to throw the dice.

We’re looking for sixes or ones to land face up.  If we throw the magic numbers, we get to choose a package.  We already know what lies wrapped beneath the gold and green paper, inside that elf stocking, under those dangling bright purple balls.  We know books lie within the package, for we’re at Book Club, our annual Christmas book exchange.

Tis the season…

Endless clink of logs: filling the wood room another moonlit night

Full cold steady stare of white moon’s face illuminates our wood room filling adventures.

Sparkling snowflakes gleam against dark evergreens like fireflies.  Soft and alive and diamond, then gone.

We crank open the heavy wood room door.  An endless winter chore.  Three and a half tall rows of split wood must be hauled in from the tidy silver tarp-covered wood pile and stacked in our wood room.

We fill the unfinished wood room after dark.  It takes three nights because we’re–dare I label it?–almost elders.  It takes middle-aged folks longer than spry young’uns.  We fill maybe an inside row each evening with the heavy maple logs. (In our pioneer youth with willing children, if we were lucky to get willing children to help, we did this in a night.  I swear it was so.)

Wolf. Sideways blowing snow. Chicken enchiladas with spicy mole sauce.

Monday.  Brown-furred wolf runs south to north in front of my car.  His legs pump, his haunches strain.  Masterful, he sprints, his legs sure, not slipping and skidding like those long skinny-legged deer who sometimes fall and splay all four legs as they attempt to gain traction on ice.  Solid, purposeful, the wolf crosses snow-covered asphalt, his eyes staring straight ahead, almost oblivious to the barreling car.  He darts into the woods, immediately  in a grove of evergreens, concealed in plain sight.

Snowy spruce

The possibility of grace and freedom

Last week, before the thermometer dipped to 22 degrees (-5.6 C) and it began to snow…

Blessed warmth shines from blue sunny skies.  We’ve forgotten what sun looks like.  We’ve forgotten how cheery we feel when sun streams warmth across the backs of grazing deer in the yard.  We’ve forgotten how bright the woods look when illuminated.

In the drowsy warmth of afternoon I creak open the windows.  The screens are long put away, stored in absent Christopher’s basement bedroom.  On our last day of wood splitting last weekend bark separated from log to reveal an amazing inner pattern.  “The secret life of bark,” I think, and attempt to photograph the hieroglyphic lines, the hidden labyrinth in a busy world.

Inner world